


Snow--A Meeting

by x_los



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-28
Updated: 2008-10-28
Packaged: 2017-11-23 01:29:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/616566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor is rescued from an ice storm, only to be placed in a still more awkward position.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snow--A Meeting

Title: Snow--A Meeting  
Rating: R  
Author: [](http://x-los.livejournal.com/profile)[**x_los**](http://x-los.livejournal.com/)  
Pairing/Characters: Eight/Jacobi!Master  
Beta: [](http://aralias.livejournal.com/profile)**aralias** , who fixed the tone, which previously did gyre and gimble in the wabe, and who this is also entirely for.  
Summary: The Doctor is rescued from an ice storm, only to be placed in a still more awkward position.  
Warning: A bit cracky.  
A/N: The voice in this is Audio!Eight, so if it doesn't sound like TVM!Eight, that's why, mea culpa, etc. Eight's description of Venice is drawn almost entirely from the BFA Audio "Stones of Venice," appropriated here because, if displaced, it can read as very interesting commentary on something else entirely. The title is a chapter title from Hardy's _Far From the Madding Crowd_.

  
***

The Doctor’s teeth at last stopped chattering when he was brought into the main hall. If it weren't for his Gallifreyan hardiness he would undoubtedly have had severe frostbite to go with his glowingly bright red cheeks.

“You know I really do have to thank you.” He smiled up at the much taller, much hairier alien trundling along beside him. “I wouldn’t have survived the night out there.”

“You are welcome,” the sort-of-bear alien acknowledged in a voice that was muffled like snowfall. The Doctor could _just_ pick up cleverly modulated harmonics—probably good provision against avalanches. How wonderfully adaptive biology could be!

Lost in appreciation of his rescuer’s suitability to his environment and, suddenly confronted with a much brighter room, he nearly walked into one of the massive rock columns supporting what appeared to be a royal reception hall. A heavy paw on the scruff of his neck pulled him back in time.

“Yes, sorry,” he cleared his throat, “still a bit disoriented—the nearly freezing to death bit, you understand.”

The alien made a light wheezing noise that was most likely a chuckle. “Your Majesty,” it addressed a second alien on what looked to be a throne: voice light, but with emphasis, like a snowball hitting a wall, “I bring you a creature pulled from the ice. Its life is forfeit unto you.”

The Doctor held up a conciliatory hand. “Hold on just a moment—what was your name again?”

“Brosh, creature.”

“Right, well, hello Brosh, I’m the Doctor, and grateful as I _am_ to you for rescuing me—and that’s very grateful, by the way—I’m not sure I like that bit there about my life being forfeit.”

Brosh shrugged his wide, furry shoulders. “You are alive to like or dislike it as you choose—and because that is so, your life is now the property of my Lord.”

The Doctor rubbed his chin and winced. “Couldn’t I just send him a really lovely fruit basket?”

Brosh gave him a blank look.

“You know, one of the big ones with the bows. Or, I don't know, maybe a cheese sampler or something, if that’d be more to his taste.”

Brosh was either unimpressed by the Doctor’s sardonic wit or doubted the quality of Stilton and Double Gloucester to be found where the Doctor came from. Fair enough, Gallifrey was hardly cornering the dairy market, but still the Doctor had hoped they could talk about this like reasonable people, and said as much, at length, until the creature apparently answering to ‘his majesty’ voiced his first opinion of the interview: “Do you want him, Brosh? It is your primary right, as his rescuer.”

Brosh wrinkled his large, tufted nose. “All my rights I defer to your Majesty, in my loyalty. Also,” he added with a sour look at the Doctor, “the thing talks too much for my liking.”

“Excuse me, I talk exactly as much as is necessary.”

“Well then, it would make a fine, exotic addition to my harem,” his majesty said, ignoring the Doctor. “I have a penchant for such curiosities, and I would see it dance. It is already nearly hairless, fine shaven like a youth or a köçek.”

“Funnily enough, that’s _not_ what being clean-shaven means in my culture." The Doctor jerked his thumb at his brave preserver. "I didn't know at the time that Brosh here's plucking me out of a drift was conditional on what looks like that old 'fate worse than death' arrangement. You really should tell strangers these things first. I'm afraid I find the proposal... unbearable? Ahahah. Ha.” Neither alien so much as smiled. "No," the Doctor coughed. "I suppose it's funnier if you're not ursine yourself." He took a step back, calculating a plunge back out into the snow and finding his prospects of escape dim and his situation somewhat grimmer than usual. “Now, let’s not be hasty about this—”

“Actually, your august Majesty, I would ask you to grant me this poor, lost creature as a boon.”

The familiar, manipulative voice came from behind the throne—literally—and the Doctor knew, before looking, that only one person got his kicks out of allusions that gauche. The Master, who’d apparently been listening all along, stepped out of the shadows, crossed his arms and leaned against the King’s gilt chair. He grinned at the Doctor, enjoying the situation fully.

He was looking startlingly different than the last time the Doctor had seen him. Now in a proper body, the Master had a physical self-confidence that screamed ‘ _really_ a Time Lord again.’ He certainly wore it well—his telepathic signature as impressive and sure as the long sweep of a ceremonial robe's heavy train. The Doctor tried not to think about how the Master had managed it… or about how he’d felt the presence which had lingered after the Master fell into the ship's portal to the Eye of Harmony dissipate from his own TARDIS months ago.

He’d had a pretty good idea that the Master wasn’t ‘really gone for good this time’ - well, he never _was_ , was he? - but now that the Master was actually standing before him, having willfully ignored the sudden vanishing of those energies felt embarrassingly like complicity. The Doctor wasn't even _miffed_ at discovering his nemesis up to his usual tricks--if anything, he felt a rush of fond indulgence. The Master, back in black, scheming to undermine Ursa Major here: _bless_. And that was even more embarrassing, because he, the Doctor, was supposed to have some ready righteous indignation or _something_ , to make him seem nonchalant about this whole business--where had _that_ gone?

“Ah,” the Doctor said with a wavering smile, “my own personal bad penny.”

“And aren’t you lucky I do turn up?” The Master rapped his fingers on the back of the King’s chair, just above the plush cushion.

“On this particular occasion, perhaps,” the Doctor agreed. “You’re not doing terribly yourself. Nice new body. After the same pattern as all your others of course, but with _just_ enough of a difference to justify switching models. However did you come by it?”

“Successfully,” the Master smirked. “Not on loan this time, Doctor. You see before you one hundred percent personal biodata. I do enjoy the exquisite sensation of _me_.” He turned away before the Doctor could get in a joke about that one. “Your majesty, I must insist. I want the prisoner for myself.”

“Lately you’ve ‘wanted my body’ in a way I’m less than entirely comfortable with, Master,” the Doctor cut in with a charming grin, earning an irate glare from the King, whose mouth had been left hanging open.

The Master tutted. “Doctor, you know we don’t discuss our affairs in company. Where _is_ your discretion?”

The alien on the throne sighed, his fur ruffling itself softly with the motion. He addressed the Master as if the Doctor hadn’t spoken at all: “Must you ask _this_ as the reward for your assistance? I was so looking forward to seeing it dance.”

“I’d spare yourself, Majesty. His Charleston, while spirited, lacks form, and his Venusian Waltzing normally involves broken furniture by the end of the set.”

“That’s rather the point of Venusian waltzing, Master.”

“Ah, then I gather that this creature is known to you?” the king continued, still ignoring the Doctor.

“Yes,” the Master granted, “mine is the prior claim. For better—”

“Or for much worse,” the Doctor put in. “I’m not very good at weddings, but I _do_ remember that part.”

“Really?” The Master raised an eyebrow. “Usually you’re conveniently amnesiac on that point.”

“Now that you mention it, I _do_ seem to be going through rather a lot of memory loss recently. It’s quite distressing really—”

“Enough!” The king waved a massive paw, and the Master took a discrete step back to avoid being inadvertently cuffed. “Off with you, then. And take your garrulous mate.”

“With pleasure,” the Master said, “Doctor?”

The Doctor sketched a short, ironic bow of his own. The Master bounded down off the dais, and, at a gesture of his hand, the Doctor followed him out of the room and down an unfamiliar corridor.

“ _I_ don’t think I talk too much,” the Doctor groused, trailing the Master down the hall.

The Master walked more slowly for a moment so that they fell neatly into step. “Well you wouldn’t, would you?”

“That’s an awfully fair-minded statement from you, Master. In fact you seem markedly less mad than you did the last time we met. Remember, when your stolen body was tumbling and crumbling into decay? Not a good look for you, incidentally—can I take your current affability to mean that you’re willing to oblige me with a lift back to my TARDIS, seeing as we’re such old friends?”

“Certainly, Doctor. After you—what’s that charming human phrase? Ah yes—‘sing for your supper,’ as it were. Given that we’re a good deal more than ‘old friends.’ ” The Master ladled a palpable irony onto the designation. The Doctor could feel the quotes around it as if they’d been dropped from a great height. They turned a corner—headed to the Master’s quarters, the Doctor now had to presume.

“That’s as may be, Master, but an exchange of the nature I _think_ you’re proposing would smack of a nasty element of sexual coercion.”

“Well, if you feel your virtue’s being compromised, far be it for me to commit spousal rape. If you’d prefer, I could go back to the throne room right now and have some guards chase you out into the snow to freeze to death like a proper arch-enemy—” The Master turned around as if to leave.

“Oh, but you’re my _best_ enemy, Master. And on second thought,” the Doctor caught his arm, “it _has_ been a while, hasn’t it?”

The Master laughed. “So quick to come around to my way of thinking, with only the frailest persuasion. But I already knew you would.”

“As long as your thinking doesn’t involve galactic conquest at the moment, we get on like—”

“Oh _don’t_ say ‘a house on fire.’ The burning building never seems to be enjoying itself half so much as you do.”

“Right, right—well, like tea and milk then. Tea’s very nice, but it’s just not the same without milk. Like Alistair and unnecessary gunfire, like Sea Devils and Silurians, like an opera score and its libretto. But I _still_ don’t see why that means I’m going to protest too little on this particular occasion, Master.”

The Master, who’d stopped walking in front of a heavy wooden door and taken a key out of his waistcoat’s small breast pocket, turned back to the Doctor with a slight smile and gestured to him with it. “Neglecting, for a moment, past experience—just there, actually.”

“What, the one about Sea Devils?” The Doctor shoved his hands in his back pockets, arms akimbo under his green frock coat, and rocked back on his heals.

“No,” the Master chuckled, looking down at the door he was opening, “charming though any comparison to unpleasantly moist creatures with chronic lisps must inevitably be. Have you managed not to notice?” The door popped open, and he looked up at the Doctor with a grin, took a step closer to encroach on his space. “You’ve been calling me ‘Master’ at every opportunity since you arrived, cluttering up your sentences as if they were minefields.” Grabbing the Doctor by his cravat, the Master tugged him into the room. The Doctor obligingly kicked the door shut behind them. “‘Master, Master, Master.’ You’ve gone whole regenerations without saying it once to my face. This practically counts as begging for it.”

“Have I done that?” The Doctor tried to hide the crinkle of amusement around his eyes with an innocent look. “I’m sure I haven’t _deliberately_ avoided addressing you by your rather _poignant_ chosen title—”

“Your third,” the Master reminded him, tone a touch poisonous, sitting down on the bed. The Doctor sat down straddling him, knees on either side of his waist.

“Ah,” the Doctor pushed the Master’s torso down on the bed with one hand, propping his elbows on either side of the Master’s shoulders and leaning over him. His hair slid down around them. “Well, I was rather cross with you then, wasn’t I? You kicked me when I was down, you _meddled_ , you know. Anyway, I’m _very_ sorry, and quite indebted to you for rescuing me from that whole harem arrangement. Which you were apparently spared the indignity of by virtue of having a beard. At least _that_ was good for something, at long last.”

The Doctor tapped said beard with his index finger, as if to prove its existence. This devolved into some exploratory toying with the rough birstliness of it, and the Doctor combing his slim white fingers through. Whatever the Doctor thought he liked, or said in disparagement of the Master’s facial hair, he knew himself but slenderly. The Master, a far better authority on the subject, could say with assurance that in many an intimate encounter the Doctor almost immediately fixated on his hair, facial or otherwise. He’d play with it with the slavish, possessed fascination most people reserved for scritching cats. Having never grown a beard himself, it seemed an object of incredible curiosity to the Doctor. The Master wouldn’t say he _preened_ under the attention, but he would admit to quite liking it, and to possibly regenerating with a bias towards beards for the Doctor’s convenience as much as from his own personal preference.

“Well, I could hardly allow _that_ , could it?” The Master tilted his chin up to facilitate the Doctor. “You’re not just _anyone’s_ property.”

The Doctor stopped his pleasant attentions immediately and arched an eyebrow. “Property, eh?”

“Shush, my wanton sex slave,” the Master deadpanned.

The Doctor snickered, then abruptly—“Oh, now that reminds me! Anything new and interesting this time around?” He looked alive with curiosity. “Do you know yet? Something you’d like to try, fresh preferences, unique kinks to cater to? You know how I like a challenge.”

The Master considered, thinking back to his body previous to the Dalek’s execution. “Less hypersexuality—”

“ _Damn._ ”

“Should have taken more advantage of it at the time, shouldn’t you?” The Master’s reserves of pity on this subject weren’t deep. “That’s what being prim will get you: lifetimes of remorse. But your idiocy aside, I have an idea.”

“Do you,” the Doctor kissed him very lightly on the lips—a soft, closed-mouth contact, “Master?”

“Start as you mean to go on, my dear.”

“Well,” the Doctor straightened up. He was sitting on his haunches, and he looked around him as if making an assessment of the situation, “I’m already in this position—”

“Poised, as it were.”

“Which _does_ seems to lend itself to taking advantage of that.”

“And if you were to reach over and open that drawer on the nightstand on your right, you might find some hand-balm—”

“Oh might I?” The Doctor raised an eyebrow, which made him look amusingly jealous, and suggested he might be about to accuse the Master via a joke-that-really-wasn’t of taking a bear-alien concubine. The Master reached up and ran a thumb along that distressed eyebrow. He was terribly attached to the Doctor’s largely buried but quite piquant possessive streak.

“This is an arctic planet, Doctor, as you might well have observed for yourself.” The Master had spent enough time in decidedly unsavory states of decay to find cold-chapped skin an unpleasant reminder. “I should think you’d be grateful not to have rough hands on this untried form of yours.”

“Ah.” The Doctor has the good grace to look a touch sheepish, caught in a moment of embarrassing investment. “Well— I _say_ ,” he pretended to suddenly notice, “is this fur bedding? _Really?_ You want to make love to me on a bed of clichés? That’s _very_ you.”

The Master magnanimously let him off the hook. “Do you honestly think I decorated, Doctor? The lack of anything but inoffensive hotel-room-esque wall hangings surely indicates away that I wasn’t even consulted. And, if you haven’t noticed, this bedding is entirely practical here. You’re shivering on top of me.”

The Doctor fidgeted shamelessly, his frustratingly still clothed body in the Master’s equally clad lap. “Oh, but you like it.” He traced an index finger over the beginnings of the Master’s erection through the heavy fabric of his trousers.

“If I may make a suggestion,” the Master squirmed lightly, “that works ever so much better with the clothes _off_ , in direct contact with or even beneath the eminently mockable fur bedclothes.

“Oh does it?” the Doctor snickered.

“ _Yes_ , Doctor, it does—oh _why_ did I ever marry _you_? Of all the _infuriating_ people in all the universes—”

“I imagine my asking you to might have had something to do with it. That’s usually the way of these things—no, lie back, I can manage my own buttons—or better still, can you reach the drawer?” The Doctor proved his capability, attending to the buttons: small, jetty circles that gleamed like tiny, murky pools in the light of the room’s oil lamps. They reminded the Master of all the little ponds in the wood between the worlds in a book he’d read as a boy to try and impress the Doctor with his knowledge of human literature. The Master reached up and pushed his hands through the opening of the Doctor’s shirt before the man was properly finished, disobeying just to disobey and more eager than he was willing to admit to. He let his hand slide between the crisp dress shirt and the warm skin above the Doctor’s right heart. It lingered there as the Doctor saw to the Master as well.

"I like the waistcoat," the Doctor pinched the fabric between his thumb and forefinger. "Is it new?"

"Nice body," the Master ignored him in favor of a less circuitous compliment, "though I must admit it seems rather too tightly strung at the moment. A little like a pocket watch that's been wound until the cogs nearly break."

“Do you even know how long it’s been?” The Doctor smoothed the pleasantly billowy shirt’s fabric out and away from the Master’s skin. “Not since that ludicrously elaborate wedding, obviously, what I meant was ‘how long since you and I last—’ ”

The Master laughed. “Of _course_ I know.” He lowered both his hands to precisely flick open the buttons of the Doctor’s cream-colored trousers—a task the Doctor had abandoned in favor of exploring the Master like a new toy.

“Twenty years,” third button, “seven months,” fourth button snagging and needing wiggled free, the Master’ knuckles brushing against the Doctor’s cock, making him twitch, “and oh, nearly six days now.”

“And have you borne them with your usual grace?” The Doctor kept his voice even as he let himself be groped, fondled, caressed, thinking in synonyms so he could achieve that measured, leisured _not_ pleasured—synonyms, he was doing _synonyms_ , not rhymes, and especially not incriminating ones—tone.

“It was interminable.” The Master’s hand, slow and determined, worked on. “It’s always interminable. But as you can see—and feel—I’ve survived.”

“It’s your specialty,” the Doctor smiled fondly, said a touch shakily, but fortunately without including any embarrassingly pleased references to how good this felt after so long an abstinence, and in a body that hadn’t yet known such a touch.

“Curiously, it’s always worth it,” the Master mused, instructing the Doctor with a crooked finger to move to finish undressing even as the Master himself did, pulling him back into his lap, handing the Doctor the salve from the armoire. “You’re always worth the years, the disappointments, the cruel refusals of everything I’ve ever attempted to give you—” The Doctor opened his mouth to protest, and the Master shoved two fingers into it, taped the jaw shut with his other hand, and continued talking to forestall further rebelliousness. “Certainly worth not having the same tedious argument neither of us ever wins in favor of fucking you, watching you above me in the lamplight.”

"Mm," the Doctor grinned lazily and finally slid down onto him again—twenty years, seven months, and almost six days later than the Master might have liked, but better late than never. "Fair enough."

***

Several hours later, a rather more disheveled Doctor, his cravat twisted awkwardly to hide that in had been subjected to some ill use, strained, and even slightly torn, drummed his fingers on the nearest readout screen.

"Not that I object, but weren't you rather in the middle of, oh, cowing the local populace into submission, that sort of thing? You know, your usual. 'You will obey me' with a side of gleeful cackling and an option on a wildly improbably disguise, coupled with a drearily predictable alias."

"Something more diverting came up." The Master employed his best 'don't push your luck' tone. "Besides, surely a genius of my stature can find better employment for himself than acquiring minions that insist on hibernating for half their lifecycles."

" _I've_ always thought so. Speaking of things I thought, I _thought_ you were taking me back to my TARDIS,” the Doctor fidgeted, now running his fingers across the Master’s sleek ebon console.

“And I am, Doctor.” The Master strode past him, brushing the back of his velvet coat as he went, flicking a dial with apparent unconcern. “Just as soon as I feel fully rewarded for saving you from that nasty business with ‘a fate worse than death.’ Tell me, do you still like Venice?”

“Like it?” The Doctor’s eyes widened. “You _know_ I adore it.”

The Master poked his head around the console to smile indulgently at him. “And why was that again, Doctor?”

“Well,” the Doctor considered, “it’s magnificent. Charming, and often quite silent and sinister. Last time I watched the light spilling from palace windows onto the Grand Canal, and all the stars looked like they were trapped under water, bursting to get out.”

Having finished setting the coordinates, the Master stalked around the console, close enough to note the rich, baroque scents of sex, fur, snow, and the Doctor’s oriental cologne.

“ _Were_ they. And?”

The Doctor swallowed hard. “And you get all these people swishing past in their gondolas, gorging themselves on fruit and cakes. The whole place lights up wonderfully at night and looks new. In the morning it’s all desolate and ruined.”

“In the morning,” the Master stroked his thumb over the Doctor’s swollen lower lip, and then smoothed his hand over his still-flushed cheek to rest in his curls, “when _you’re_ suitably debauched and ruined—when I’ve indulged you to my satisfaction, spoiled you rotten, slipped marzipan fruits into that pretty mouth and come in it, when I’ve left you spent and dazed and knowing whose you are— _then_ , Doctor, I’ll consider myself repaid, and I’ll take you back to your TARDIS and let you run along. For now. Does that sound like a fair bargain, my dear?”

He leaned down and sunk his teeth carefully, with exquisite decision, into the vein in the Doctor’s neck, just below his ear. He smiled into the skin when he heard the Doctor swallow his own breath with a strangled noise and hissed into the Doctor’s ear: “Is that to _your_ satisfaction?”

The Doctor laughed, shakily, and took a discreet step back. “It sounds like a second honeymoon. Mind you the first one was something of a wash. The middle of the Movian Empire, and then those Cybermen attacked on the second day, and the room service at that hotel left something to be desired—what were we thinking, trying to buy a package holiday? I mean, _us_ , of all people—”

The Master knew the Doctor had really liked nothing better than when they had to join their intellects to save the resort and thus their honeymoon (and, incidentally, the planet’s entire population from Cyber-conversion). So instead of pretending anything else, he took a step forward, hooking a hand around the back of the Doctor’s neck, snaking the other around his waist. There would be no further physical evasions, no more conversational dodges.

“I’d rather you were thinking about how I might skip the Renaissance entirely and head for the city’s end.” His eyes snagged and caught the Doctor’s, caging his gaze just as effectively as his body. “I could fuck you on an abandoned feather bed of moldering silks as the building sank underneath us, and the marble façades cracked and dropped. I’d ignore it entirely just to press your legs further back towards the bed. Hands on those new, pale thighs of yours—”

“You know, you’re _ridiculous_ on occasion, but sometimes I absolutely _adore_ you.” It came out in a disconcerted rush. The Doctor’s color was high, his pupils huge, and he was breathing unsteadily, nearly trembling in the Master’s grasp. The Master chucked. That was more like it.

“Of course you do, Doctor. When you put your mind to it you have _excellent_ taste. I take it you’ll play nicely and come?”

“Repeatedly, I imagine.”

The Master tried not to look amused by the awful pun and failed. “Very good then.”

They’d get into a fight before he took the Doctor back—over something inconsequential, idiotic. They usually did. It made the parting easier for both of them, to be too annoyed with each other to be either nostalgic or simply regretful.

Sensing the bleak turn of the Master’s mind, the Doctor put both hands on his chest, kissed him lightly, murmured against his lips: “Do you think we could make love in a gondola without over-balancing? I ask purely from a spirit of scientific inquiry, you understand.”

The Master, coming back to the moment, considered. “You know I’ve no idea—but you _could_ pay any gondolier in the city to lend you his and leave you alone, if your money was right.”

“And I know some _very_ conveniently deserted canals in which we could easily conduct our experiments.”

“Such a dedicated scientist, Doctor.”

The Doctor pulled back looking rather chuffed. “Thank you, Master. I do try you know.”

***  



End file.
